


later

by orphan_account



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 09:07:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21508588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The hug is short. One second, they’re hugging, grasping onto each other like they’re each other’s life rafts; the next, they’re pulling apart, connected only by Markus’ hand on Simon’s shoulder and Simon’s arm around Markus’.“Simon,” says Markus. “I… I-”“Later.”
Relationships: Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 121





	later

**Author's Note:**

> first fic for dbh. i'm still getting the hang of everybody, so. low expectations, in terms of characterization.

The hug is short. One second, they’re hugging, grasping onto each other like they’re each other’s life rafts; the next, they’re pulling apart, connected only by Markus’ hand on Simon’s shoulder and Simon’s arm around Markus’.

“Simon,” says Markus. “I… I-”

“Later.”

Simon, shaking his head, offers Markus a fragile smile. His teeth are stained, and there’s a matching smear of blue on his chin.

“Later, okay?” he repeats, and pats Markus’ shoulder. The matter drops like a stone into a lake, and Markus helps him limp to the cargo hold.

* * *

“Later” is a funny word. It never comes, even though it implies it someday will. Definitive and ephemeral, “later” hangs in the back of Markus’ mind, there to remember when the business of heading a revolution-in-its-infancy ebbs. The only thing “later” really is, he thinks, is the gentlest way Simon could say “not now.”

After Jericho’s-- the freighter’s-- destruction, and after the subsequent demonstration, it was ruled that the androids, now refugees in the city of their very conception, would be allowed a number of apartment blocks between downtown Detroit and the industrial district. So far, it works out well, because there are plenty of now-defunct Cyberlife warehouses with plenty of spare parts, and Jericho has their pick. Androids come to them for repairs and maintenance, and they quickly convert the ground floor of one of their buildings into a makeshift hospital.

Markus remembers very clearly the first few minutes of his deviancy. Waking up in what humans might call a trash heap, but he saw as a mass grave. Androids reduced to bits and pieces desperately struggling to keep moving, keep awake, keep alive, until they eventually and invariably succumbed. He touches the perimeter of his pilfered ocular unit, and wonders what sorts of things its former owner had seen with it.

“Markus?” Josh asks, his voice drawing him from his thoughts. His face wears an expression of concern, in contrast to North’s impatience. “You were somewhere else there. Is everything alright?”

Markus blinks, shakes his head.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I’m fine. So, uh, courts.”

Josh seems mollified for the time being, ready to get back to the discussion; North squints a little, like she knows Markus isn’t quite bullshitting them, but she still doesn’t think he’s telling the whole truth. She hadn’t been ecstatic with him when he had announced his plan for a peaceful demonstration, but the past month has tempered her anger little by little.

She still hasn’t apologized to Josh for her outburst, but she at least has the sense not to defend what she had said. That’s as much of an apology as she’s ever given, and the rest may come with time.

“Courts,” Josh agrees, nodding. “I get that they’re trying to give us autonomy, in a clumsy way, but I don’t think separate courts for androids is a good idea in the long run.”

“It’s in their damn Constitution,” North cuts in. “Trial by jury of peers. Do you want to be judged by a bunch of humans?”

Josh gives her a cold look. Markus heaves a long sigh, running a hand over his close-cropped hair.

“I’m with Josh on this,” he says. “That’s only for juries. We’ll include a stipulation for half a jury to be androids, and for the pool of jurors to include a percentage of androids, too.”

“Right,” Josh agrees, “and it’ll be whether it’s a human on trial or an android.”

North looks between the two of them, shaking her head, but concedes the matter.

“Okay, but this all brings up another thing,” she points out. They both know what she’s talking about before she has to say another word. They know, because it’s been weighing heavy on them, and probably on all of Jericho.

When Markus had first found them, Simon had explained that they were sustaining themselves off of the salvaged biocomponents of androids who died. Markus wasn’t the only one with mismatched eyes, with parts that weren’t originally his own. Under the proposals the de-facto leaders of Jericho were in the process of penning, this sort of finders-keepers would be made illegal. Of course, it would also come with protections and allowances that would reduce, if not completely eliminate, the need to loot biocomponents from other androids, and so it was comparing apples and oranges at this point. They were creating a world of different circumstances; did deeming it morally reprehensible going forward retroactively make it wrong in the past? It was easy for someone to say no when they had never pulled the thirium pump regulator from the sparking torso of a dying android. It was easy for someone to say yes when they had never been in such dire need, too.

They had all done what they had to to get here still alive. They were all hounded by _something,_ whether it was the circumstances of their deviation or what they had done to survive or what they had given up. Freedom was a tricky business to coordinate.

North sighs, stepping back from the table and leaning against a cabinet, taking a moment to play with the end of her long braid.

“Where’s your yes-man?” she asks, which Markus knows is directed at him, even though she hasn’t looked up.

“Talking to Cyberlife store managers,” he answers. “You know that. He’s picking up shipments of biocomponents. If you want to talk to him, he should be back in a couple of hours.”

“Mm,” North hums, making an expression that says that that wasn’t the answer she was angling for. Markus hears Josh give a short laugh next to him.

“Come on,” he says-- _oh, Josh, not you too--_ and seems to give up the discussion for a more lighthearted conversation. “You were talking with him earlier, weren’t you? What abouts?”

“Yeah, Markus, what _abouts?”_

North has dropped her braid, her mouth a sharp angle. One of Josh’s eyebrows lifts imploringly.

“You two are the meanest friends I could have landed,” Markus tries to divert them. “Absolutely the worst.”

He and Simon had talked for a little while earlier, that much is true. Markus had gone to the roof, just stood and hummed to himself as he watched the sun hit the glass panes of tall office buildings at a low angle. The sky was cast in yellow. And then Simon came up, and they had talked.

“It wasn’t really…” Markus fumbles for the right words, pursing his lips like he’s trying to find the perfect thing to say to a crowd. “... We didn’t talk about much. He asked how your meeting went, Josh.”

“Asked me yesterday,” Josh tells him, inclining his head. “Right after I got back. We spent half an hour going over my conversation with the mayor and where to go from there.”

He and North are now both looking at Markus like he’s hiding something from them, but he’s really not. He just doesn’t know how to say it in a way they’ll believe, especially since both of them know, whether he’s told them explicitly (Josh) or they’ve intuited (North) that he has feelings of a certain sort for a certain PL600. He gives an exaggerated shrug.

“Well, I don’t know why he asked me, then,” he says, the only thing he can offer, even though the most obvious conclusion is calling to him from the back of his mind: Simon wanted an excuse to talk with him.

Simon has never needed an excuse to talk with him, Markus tells himself. He’s welcome, any time. 

“All I’m saying-” Josh starts speaking again, holds his hands up in a placating gesture- “is that maybe you haven’t talked about everything you need to talk about.”

 _If you get what I mean,_ he adds in Markus’ head. Markus purses his lips, but he-- and Josh-- both know he's right.

“Talk to him, Markus,” North advises him, in what he recognizes as the gentlest voice she can manage. “You know he won’t be the one to bring it up.”

* * *

The next day, Markus finds Simon out in the garden. It’s the courtyard of one of the apartment blocks, most of the concrete torn up and replaced with planters, where flowering plants will grow in the warmer months. It gives the caretakers and the gardeners something to placate their residual programming, as well as for any of them to enjoy. Some AP700s have been making noises about teaching gardening, regardless of function, their reasoning being that androids should have hobbies, same as humans do. Markus, who has fond memories of when he began to pluck out tunes on the piano in Carl’s living room, is inclined to agree. One of the sweetest parts of life is cultivation, finding something you care about and nurturing the green stalk of it.

He thinks he felt one of those thin green things in his chest the moment he first met Simon.

Markus finds him with a group of YK500s, reciting a story to them from memory. He has stores of them in his memory, as all models meant to care for families do, but something in the way he tells this one gives the impression that he’s making it up on the spot. The children sit in rapt attention with him as he divulges to them, like a shared secret, how the knight and his princess escaped through the maze of thorns.

He looks up just as he finishes, meeting Markus’ eyes.

“Alright,” he tells his audience, “I think that’s all the time I have for you right now.”

They disperse, some heading into the building, some running off to the other end of the garden and finding a place to play. Simon stands as Markus approaches him, dusting dirt off of his pants and offering him a smile.

“Markus,” he greets him. “How are you?”

Markus returns the smile, toeing the soil.

“I’m doing well,” he answers. “What about you? You had quite an audience just a second ago.”

Simon shrugs, smiles again, and looks around at where all the kids had been sitting just a minute ago, as if reconstructing the scene.

“They get bored around here sometimes,” he replies. “All the grown-ups are busy with the revolution. They’re little kids-- they don’t get what all the fuss is about, and they want someone to take a break and pay attention to them.”

Markus extends a hand, and the two of them fall into step beside each other, walking towards the apartments. The air is brisk, threatening snowfall any minute. Indeed, flakes fall intermittently, and Simon, who had spent the past half hour or so outdoors, has a buildup on his shoulders and the top of his head. Markus reaches over to brush it off, and Simon startles, turning his head and seeing Markus’ hand before settling. His cheeks are bitten pale from the cold, even a little bit blue. The temperature isn’t nearly low enough to affect their biocomponents, though.

“Is that what you did before?” Markus finds himself asking him. “Before Jericho.”

Beside him, Simon pulls his mouth into the shape of a smile.

“No, not really,” he replies. “I took care of elderly folks, actually.”

“Oh.”

 _So did I,_ Markus thinks, remembering Carl with his tattoos and scarves. Carl, laying in a hospital bed, an unfamiliar android taking Markus’ old position. _So did I._

“It was a hard job,” Simon goes on. “I didn’t realize it for years, how hard it was. They declined, they always did... I tidied rooms afterwards.”

Carl’s words come back to him. _Humans are such a fragile machine._ He wonders, briefly, how Carl did it, pushing through day after day even with the knowledge that one of those days was going to be the last day he ever got. Was it like that first handful of days after Markus had deviated, when he knew that, should anything happen to him, there was no replacement coming, no transfer of data to another chassis?

His hand settles and stills on Simon’s shoulder, and Simon’s smile eases a bit. He’s told him about Carl before, and feels that Simon can sense that that’s where his thoughts have gone.

“It’s hard,” Markus agrees, “to know that someone you care about won’t be there as long as you will.”

Simon nods, and Markus glances over at him, remembering a blue smear on his chin, thirium staining a gnarly tear in a stolen Stratford Tower uniform. There had been a time, even if it had only been the span of a day or so, when he had thought Simon had died. When he had thought Simon was dead. The sights and sounds of any memory of that time come with the emotions, too, irreversibly linked. They make Markus’ heart clench painfully.

“Maybe we should have that ‘later’ now,” he says.

* * *

Markus’ room is closest; they retreat there, out of the cold that neither of them properly feel, but still rub their hands together and laugh jittery laughs as if they do. Markus’ chassis is cold to the touch, he knows on an objective, diagnostic level, but he and Simon make their way down the hall and duck into his room, and he’s never felt warmer. It might as well be a sunny day in Carl’s studio, light pouring in from all angles. Simon shakes snow out of his hair, and Markus helps with his shoulders. If they spend an extra moment close, neither of them calls the other out on it.

“I never got to say what I wanted to say,” Markus finally begins, giving Simon’s jacket one last once-over. He doesn’t take a step back afterwards. Neither does Simon. Instead, he stands with that look on his face he always gets when he’s listening. Markus has his full attention, and it’s a little more intimidating than he thought it would be.

“I…” he says. Swallows, even though he doesn’t need to, and starts again with renewed confidence. “That night, when you came back to Jericho. There was so much I wanted to tell you, Simon, but you were back, and the only thing I wanted in the world was to make sure.”

He had taken two steps forward and pulled Simon into his arms, his memory of the event supplies in perfect detail. He can count the number of milliseconds before Simon’s hands had come up to return the embrace, the number of milliseconds before they parted again. Simon had barely said a thing, and perhaps he had been just as surprised to be back as Markus was to see him, though “surprised” feels like the understatement of the century.

“I’ve had a month, or a little over, to be certain you’re back, and that you’re not leaving us again,” Markus continues. He watches a smile tug at Simon’s mouth. “A month is a long time to go without saying anything.”

Simon makes to turn his head away, but Markus moves a hand to his cheek, not pressing enough to turn him back, but enough so that it matters. Under his touch, Simon’s skin fades in a blue halo, receding for a moment and then reappearing slowly. Markus’ own fingers go white and naked.

“I wanted to tell you that I missed you, and I had no idea what I would have done if you’d died,” he says, his words measured and deliberate. “I wanted to tell you that you mean more to me than I can tell you in words.”

His eyes flit over to his hand where it rests on Simon’s cheek, and then back up to Simon’s eyes. Simon’s gaze follows his, and, pursing his lips for a moment, he nods.

Markus lets it all flow over and through him. How his memory had been able to store all of this, he has no idea, because it seems like too much for anyone, human or android, to feel. Too overwhelming, liable to break free of its containment and bury a little bit of itself in every second of every day. Perhaps that’s what it’s been doing this whole time.

In turn, he feels something steady pressing at his consciousness. It’s warm and soft, but heavy, like a thick blanket or a pouch of blue blood as it settles in his system. It wraps around him, flows into every place he makes available for it. Buoys him as he shares his memories and feelings through the interface, and when they both come out of it, he realizes that that was Simon.

Simon is smiling at him, a little shellshocked. Markus imagines he looks much the same; he gets a brief flash of himself through Simon’s vision, which confirms that, yes, he does.

“You’re right,” says Simon with a shaky laugh. “That’s… that’s a lot to not say.”

“Yeah.”

He and Markus stand like that, perfectly still, the room so quiet that they can hear each other’s thirium pumps working. They watch each other, through their own eyes and through each other’s. When Markus finally cups his hand around the back of Simon’s head and hauls him in, Simon doesn’t hesitate to throw his arms around him. They kiss once. Twice. Again.

Night falls quickly in the winter. When it’s time to go into stasis, they elect to do so together, rationalizing that Markus’ bed is just big enough for two.

* * *

Morning comes, brought by North’s voice.

“Markus!” she calls, rapping on the door. “Markus, don’t tell me you’re sleeping in! Josh wants to talk about the court thing again, and he can’t find Simon!”

Beside Markus, Simon mutters something unintelligible. Markus regards him with a smile.

“Later, okay?”


End file.
